Surfing, Skateboarding, Music, Photography, Travel, Culture and general antics of the youth on the run.

Chippa Wilson on the stoop Collected Thoughts 008

Chippa Wilson photographed by Nate Lawrence What Youth
06.07.12 – TAGS: ,

Here’s Chippa outside the rental he shared with Mitch and Craig on their trip into the Australian desert, where their minds drifted into a pleasant psychosis commonly called “desert fever” and they began to see things. Like tubes. Tubes and ramps.

Chippa recalls the experience:

I didn’t even check if there were good waves there, I just heard there’s like huge sharks, and it’s cold, and I wasn’t too psyched. But I was just like, Fuck it, I’m going for sure.

That was at first, until we got there, and then there was these rights and just perfect lefts, definitely different then I anticipated. I’m calling, like, I don’t want to make it public or anything, but it has like the best waves in the world.

The first day we got there it was real windy. We got there the day of a storm, and we drove up the coast for two hours, to these cliffs up the point from the slab. It looked pretty perfect but I hadn’t surfed a pit in a long time, so I was kind of on my back foot.

Then we checked another slab and I was like, What am I doing? I went to bed that night, woke up, and it was all offshore in the morning, and just perfect pits. Then we had this lefthand that would go into a little closeout section. It was like as much fun as I’d ever had surfing.

It was only me, Mitch and Ando out there and they have these sets with two to three good ones probably every 10 minutes or something like that. You’ve got no people to worry about, like you’re not going on one and then having to wait 20 minutes for the next chance.

We’d go travel 40 minutes on a dirt road to the west, jet uphill and get to the IGA, the supermarket, just stock up on Nutribars and water, you know just chips and snacks. Then snack all day and make it to the pubs at 8:30. Like a full Groundhog Day but with perfect waves, every day.

Dillon Perillo poetry What Youth

Dillon’s Travelogue, Continued Collected Thoughts 027

PHOTO: Neville By Dillon Perillo, from Portugal (see Dillon’s first European journal entry here) I’m shoveling my feet along the Portuguese pavilion looking for food. With my blood sugar bottoming out I become exasperated with life. Everything about it, the girls, money, status, even the art of digesting frustrates me like a spoiled little boy…

Courtney Jadke Napkin Apocalypse shooting photos for What Youth Issue 2

Napkin Apocalypse for What Youth Issue Two Collected Thoughts 026

Courtney Jaedke is Dane Reynolds’s girlfriend. She creates and styles under the name Napkin Apocalypse. We call her Qwertini sometimes. We recently asked her to creative-direct and shoot an entire fashion feature for our second issue. Her response: “How big is this? How many photos? When’s the due date and where can I find some…

Dillon Perillo in France

Journal entry numero who gives a fuck Collected Thoughts 025

(Photo: Alex Laurel) By Dillon Perillo (Short easy not the end more to come prose #needsimprovement. —Dillon, sent from on the road in Europe) A whole life. I wait for my flight. I wait for it to land. I wait for my ride that hopefully picks me up. What the fuck am I doing writing…

Dane Reynolds and Kolohe Andino at What Youth HQ

Dane and Kolohe behind What Youth Collected Thoughts 024

The day before these two left for France to compete in the Quiksilver Pro they came by What Youth and hung out. Kolohe dropped off some film and Dane was here to work on art direction for Issue Two, and they both ended up staying for the day. Dane brought all his dogs — Boogie,…

Curren Caples and Jay Adams at Arto Saari's house What Youth

Tuesday at Arto’s Collected Thoughts 023

Last week something unusual happened and we were there. Arto Saari had an idea for this skate session he wanted to shoot. He invited Jay Adams, who’s now 51, and Curren Caples, 16, to his backyard pool in Hollywood to trade runs and kind of rap out. We got to go film it for What…

Kelly Slater What Youth Kustom Air strike

Kelly Slater wasn’t scared Collected Thoughts 022

We learned that this flag’s a liar. When that Kustom Airstrike trip happened a while back, every surfer got one of these with his name on it. You see them in the intro to each Airstrike episode. This one was for Kelly in case he showed up on the boat. Kelly was actually invited on…

Kai Neville, Dane Reynolds, Yadin Nichol and Dillon Perillo at Channel Islands Surfbaoards in Santa barbara for the Dear Suburbia Premiere What Youth

Shop Kids: Still a thing Collected Thoughts 021

We were just in Santa Barbara for a nighttime film premiere, and before it got started we went into the Channel Islands shop to touch surfboards. Inside were surf shop things: new boards to look at, used boards to buy, accessories, T-shirts, wall photos, and shop kids. Real, loitering shop kids like you read about…

Danny Fuller at the What Youth HQ

How Danny won Chanel Collected Thoughts 020

The other day we were at RVCA with Danny Fuller, and I asked him about Chanel. Danny is a model with the Ford agency and he’s the face of Chanel Homme Sport right now, which you know if you’ve flown international and walked past a Duty Free, or gone into Saks Fifth Avenue, or basically…

Dillon Perillo at home eating cereal What Youth

At the Perillo Home Collected Thoughts 019

Last Friday afternoon, peak summer, clear and sunny, 65-degree water with a south swell in it — everything right about California wrapped into a single perfect day just like the ones before and after it — I drove to Malibu, to Dillon’s house. It was the best possible moment not to do that. Every car…

Taj Burrow photographed by Nate Lawrence What Youth

Taj Burrow at the Hyatt Collected Thoughts 018

I wanted to see Taj before he left California, so on his last day here we met at the Hyatt in Huntington Beach. He told me to find him in the hotel gym. When I walked in Taj was flat on a weight bench, with his trainer bent over him pushing on his hip flexor….

Craig Anderson Dane Reynolds What Youth

This is Collected Thoughts Collected Thoughts 017

This place, whatyouth.com, is three months old now, but people who’ve been here since the start might remember that this section used to be called Field Candy. No longer, and here’s why: It turns out Field Candy is already a company. They make camping tents, for sleeping in, that are decorated with artwork. They took…

Kolohe Andino Bowling

Kolohe, Drinking Juice Collected Thoughts 016

Kolohe picked us up in his rusty ghetto truck today and we went to eat lunch, though he didn’t actually eat lunch. He drank it, because he’s doing another juice fast, which may be the only thing more feminine than doing a juice fast. Doing another juice fast. The last one sort of landed him…

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